VietNamNet Bridge – The Ministry of Information and Communication is discussing the way of propping up set top boxes (STB) to people in the implementation of the national program on TV digitalization. Meanwhile, VTC has delayed its STB production project.

Ta Quang Son, General Director of Hanel, said the State needs to give financial support to the poor families to help them approach to the digital terrestrial TV services to be provided in Vietnam from 2015. Son has suggested giving cards directly to the households.

It is expected that the demand would be very high in the first two years of the program implementation. Therefore, the State needs to nominate some enterprises to make and provide STBs to the national TV digitalization program.

Agreeing that the State should give financial support to help people afford STBs, Nguyen Tri Tin, Deputy Director of the Hai Phong Television, warned that it would be impossible to rely on the local budgets to implement the program, because this would require a big sum of money.

Therefore, Tin thinks that local television stations themselves need to take initiative in giving support to people to use digital TV in the first two years. The Hai Phong Television, in preparing for the digital TV broadcasting by 2015, it would give VND300,000 to every poor household, which would be sourced from the revenue from ad services.

Tran Minh Chieu, Deputy Director of the Bac Giang Television, has suggested using the money from the public telecom fund for the program implementation.

Meanwhile, Nguyen Tuan Phuong from the Quang Ninh Television said there’s no need to think about the subsidization and it’d be better not to force people to use digital TV  immediately in the first phase of the program. If people realize the importance of the digital technology, they would shift to use digital TV spontaneously. If so, the demand for STBs would be too big in the first year, thus allowing to ease the pressure on the state budget.

The national TV digitalization program is a big and costly program which every technology firm hopes they can get involved in. It is foreseeable that the demand for STBs would be very big in some years, and Vietnamese enterprises should think on making STBs themselves, or Chinese STBs would flood the domestic market.

Therefore, it is really a big surprise that VTC, which planned to make investment in an STB factory for a long time, has unexpectedly announced the decision to delay the project.

It’s seemingly not the right time to make or assemble STBs. Hoang Le Son, Director of VTC Digital confirmed that VTC discussed with some South Korean electronics manufacturers to set up an STB factory which would make products to provide to the domestic market. However, the production plan has been delayed due to some difficulties.

The biggest problem, according to Son, is that the STBs to be produced domestically would be uncompetitive with the imports.

Also according to Son, the import tariff on STB imports under the mode of complete built unit is zero percent. Meanwhile, the producers have to pay import tax for the electronics they import to assemble finished STBs domestically.

VTC is still considering the possibility of cooperating with an electronic firm which has factory in Vietnam already, to make STBs.

At present, the STBs bearing VTC brands are made overseas under the design and standards set by VTC and then imported to Vietnam as complete built units.

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